M 



s& 



LIFE WLIFE 




R. H. FITZHVGH 



Life to Life. 



Comprising 

Overworked, 
An Abused Gift, 
Gambling, I., 
Gambling, II., 
Not So Easy, 
Life to Life, 
The Higher Social Life, 

Persistent Identity. 



By 
R. H. FITZHUGH, 

ft* 

Lexington, Ky. 



^* 5 

^ 



Published by 
J. L. Richardson & Co. 

LEXINGTON. KV. 






^e^^^t 




Dedicated 
lo Every Lover of His Fellow Man, 



Publishers' Note. 



As an earnest of the possible merits of tins little 
group of short essays, the following testimonials touch- 
ing "He is Most Blest," a former publication by the 
author, are respectfully offered. 

J. L. Richardson & Co., 

Publishers. 



In Commendation. 



St. Peter's Church, Pittsburg. 
My Dear Captain Fitzhugh — I have read your tracts 
with great interest, and some of your beautiful similes 
have been floating in my mind ever since. They are 
most excellent and I am sure will do good. 

For depth of spiritual experience and poetic beauty 
of expression, I do not know their equal. 

Ever affectionately yours, 

(Rev.) E. H. Ward. 
(Former Rector of Christ Church, Lexington). 

Washington, D. C, March 9, 1908. 
My Dear Captain Fitzhugh — Please accept my sin- 
cere thanks for the little tracts you were kind enough to 
send me. I have read them with great pleasure, and I 
hope, profit. Indeed, from the time I began I did not 
put the booklet down until I had read every line. 

The tracts are quite as remarkable for their literary 
excellence as for the spirit of deep devotion that inspires 
every sentence. If any one of them can he said to be 
best, it is "Not All Gloom." 

Thanking you again and again, I am 

Very sincerely yours, 

Hilary A. Herbert, 
(Ex-Secretary of the Navy). 



In Commendation 

St. Agnes' Chapel, New York, 

March 19, 1908. 
My Dear Captain Fitzhugh— I am very grateful to 
you for sending me your book of beautiful little tracts. 
They are full of deep truth and will, I am sure, give 
help wherever they may go. 

With kind regards, believe me 

Sincerely yours, 
(Rev.) William T. Manning, 

Rector Trinity Church, N. Y. 

St. James' Church, New York, 

December 5, 1907. 
My Dear Captain Fitzhugh— Thanks for a copy of 
your "He is Most Blest." I think the finest of your 
antitheses are the following: "He asked for riches that 
he might be happy; he was given poverty that he might 
be wise;" "He asked to rule that he might be great; 
he was made to serve that he might be greater;" "He 
asked for all things that he might enjoy life; he was 
given Life that he might enjoy all things;" "He had 
sought happiness where it could not be found, and had 
found happiness where he had never songht it." 

May many heed your words and profit by them, 
including 

Yours faithfully, 

(Bishop) F. C. Courtney. 

Colorado Springs, March 4, 1904. 
My Dear Captain Fitzhugh— I am especially pleased 
by your article on life's voyage, "In the Outer Harbor." 
It made a deep impression on both my wife and myself 
as one of the sweetest allegories we had ever seen. 



In Commendation 

It is surely this common love of the unseen, this 
reaching out for the "substance of things hoped for," 
which, notwithstanding our too brief acquaintance, has 
drawn us so closely together. 

Of all men whom I know I have most cause to 
thank God for my friends, among whom I rejoice to 
number you. 

You have remarkable power in expressing the real 
outstretch of the soul toward God. 

Your affectionate friend, 

W. C. Sturgis. 
(Former Professor of Botany at Yale University). 

Princeton, N. J., March 26, 1908. 
My Dear Captain Fitzhugh — Let me thank you very 
warmly for the booklet, containing your beautiful little 
essays on spiritual themes. I like them very much, and 
feel sure that they will do good to all who read them. 
Faithfully yours, 

(Rev.) Henry Van Dyke. 



Grace Church Rectory, 850 Broadway, 

New York, December 5, 1907. 
My Dear Captain Fitzhugh— Thank you for letting 
me see your deeply spiritual communication in the Lex- 
ington Leader. It ought to be printed in leaflet form for 
distribution, for it may truly be said of your strong sen- 
tences that in them the thoughts of many hearts have 
been revealed. 

Faithfully yours, 

(Rev. ) W. R. Huntington. 



/;/ Comme?idation 

St. James' Church, 128 Rush Street, 

Chicago, May 12, 1908. 

My Dear Captain Fitzhugh — I have not read any- 
thing for a long time that has been so helpful to me as 
your little book, "He is Most Blest." It came to me 
when I needed strength, and the good it did me I am 
sure it can do to others. With all my heart I thank God 
that he gave you the thoughts which you have so well 
expressed. Many another weary one will be made glad 
by these pages, and will see things in a richer and hap- 
pier light. I shall do my best to have the book go into 
the homes of many of my people. 

With kindest regards and with my earnest prayer 
that our Heavenly Father may continue to you His 
blessing, I remain very sincerely yours, 

(Rev.) James S. Stone. 



First Congregational Church, 
Muskegon, Mich., May 9, 1908. 
Capt. R. H. Fitzhugh, Lexington, Ky. 

My Dear Mr. Fitzhugh — Thank you very much for 
the sample copy of your series of tracts. I am delighted 
with them, and can say that it is just the kind of mate- 
rial I shall want to use in my ministry. I wish you 
would send me a dozen copies with bill. 

Hoping your humanitarian work, as well as your 
literary work, is progressing well, 

Very cordially yours, 

(Rev.) Archibald Hadden. 



/;/ Commendation 

[From the Christian Advocate of Sept. 10, 1908]. 

"He is Most Blest" is the title of five essays on 
spiritual themes by Captain R. H. Fitzhugh, a layman, 
who has reflected calmly and writes strongly on the life 
that now is. 

There are a robustness of utterance and a calm 
strength and poise in the words or this man of faith 
which will be especially comforting to the aged. A book 
ior Christian men. 



(§\mwatk?b. 



OVERWORKED 

A SWEET NOTE FROM THE SAVAGE WILD 

All wisdom is not vouchsafed to any one 
age. All progress is not toward higher light. 

In some branches of economy the best is 
far behind us. Even now hoary centuries are 
searched for that which is most beautiful in 
architecture, in sculpture, and in the portrayal 
on canvas of human attributes. 

It will not be denied that the ultimate goal 
of social science is an equitable, impartial 
democracy — a popular government in which 
the body politic is the unit, and wherein the 
superfluous strength of some is employed to 
supplement the lack of endowment in others, 
thus obtaining the maximum of results, on a 
peaceful plane, of human thought and energy. 

From the savage wild of other days there 
comes the long lost note of human equality — 
the proclamation of the oneness of man in the 
sight of the Author of men. It is the denial 
of the right of any man to hold exclusively as 



1 4 Overworked 

his own any portion of that which a common 
Father has bestowed jointly upon all his chil- 
dren. It proclaims that "the earth is the 
Lord's and the fulness thereof," and that for a 
season He has made it the home alike of the 
weak and the strong. The lands are His and 
the waters are His, and anywhere upon land 
or water every child has a common right with 
every other child to live and move, and fill to 
the full the measure of his capacity for acquisi- 
tion and enjoyment. 

Here every child that comes into the world 
is born to a single share (and but a single 
share) of a God-owned planet; and neither by 
craft, nor might, nor the quieting grace of 
gold may he acquire another's share, or part 
with that he hath. 

Here the prize is not to the swift, nor the 
lion's share to the strong. The prodigal store- 
house of plain and forest is free to all: the 
turkey and the ptarmigan, the bison and the 
bear are meat alike to him who bends the 
stiffest bow, and him of weakest thews: the 
resplendent trout of the mountain brook, the 
great game salmon of the ice-bound north, 
and those that inhabit the ocean's depths are 
trapped and speared in peaceful unity. 



Overworked 15 

Here avarice is without occupation, and 
greed maintains perpetual fast. 

Here oppression comes not with might, but 
the weak share in the trophies of the strong; 
the swift of foot imparts to him who speeds 
not so fast, and the cunning trapper divides 
with him who knows not so well the haunts 
and habits of those who flee from the presence 
of man. 

This is a lesson from the savage wild — a 
lesson in the first principles of a government 
based upon the brotherhood of man, and joint 
ownership in all not created by man, but which 
existed before the devious feet of men had 
trod the earth, and was vested in the whole 
family of mankind, never to be alienated there- 
from by partition, or rights in severalty. 

This, you say, might be well enough for a 
savage condition, but to suggest its application 
to a state of civilization is purely Utopian. 

Why Utopian? Is the savage superior to the 
civilized man? And if he can live in peace and 
happiness in a commonwealth in fact and not 
in name only, is it not reasonable to assume 
that his brother of higher (?) light might do as 
well? 

There are to-day, in the United States, 
those in places of high authority, some in the 



16 Ovenvorked 

councils of the nation, who would scout the 
idea of such a state of common interests as 
the suggestion of a disordered brain, and who 
are yet honoring the principle in their public 
utterances and acts. 

This is especially noticeable in the marked 
and growing tendency of the times toward the 
reservation or creation of more and larger 
areas of common territory. Contemplated 
cities are laid out with an eye to the amplest 
provision for parks and play-grounds; old 
cities are enlarging those they have, and under 
the law of eminent domain, creating others 
with increasing frequency by the appropriation 
and destruction of whole blocks of individual 
property. 

This is done in recognition of the heaven- 
ordained right of every child born into the 
world to one child's share in earth and air — the 
right to ground to stand on, in order that he 
may have the right to breathe without "by 
your leave" to any being but Him whose 
planet this is. 

This is but the smaller manifestation of the 
movement — state and federal authorities are 
awakening wonderfully to a sense of its impor- 
tance, and large boundaries of public lands 
are now withheld, or to be withheld from the 



Overworked \ 7 

gratification of private greed, and devoted to 
the equal enjoyment of every citizen of what- 
ever caste, color or condition. 

These are but the early tokens of an uni- 
versal movement toward the restoration to the 
children of men of their natural and inaliena- 
ble birthright. 

Is individual and associated aggrandizement 
and oppression an essential property of pro- 
gress and enlightenment? 

Is maddening inequality and wretchedness, 
both of him who has too little and him who 
has too much, an indispensable adjunct of our 
boasted latter-day life? 

Is it not easily conceivable that such a con- 
dition of common interest might obtain as 
well in a community of advanced knowledge 
and achievement as among the red men of 
North America? 

Surely a Plato or a Socrates would have 
found no difficulty in thinking and speaking as 
wisely in a peaceful community where there 
was an equality of simple, wholesome wealth, 
as amid the sorrowful cries of those who lacked 
for bread, and the masked misery of those 
whose superabundance was but a surfeit of 
sweet things, and the thief of pleasant anti- 
cipation. 



18 Overworked 

In such a condition of tranquility proceed- 
ing from a sense of human oneness, does there 
appear to be anything that is inconsistent with 
the present-day achievement either in the 
intellectual or the material world? Would 
there be less done in earth, and air, and water? 
Certainly if consolidated,, corporate wealth is 
essential to such an end, a corporation of the 
whole would be more potential than that of 
any portion thereof. 

If it be said that such a condition of simple 
savage life did not bring peace, that the war- 
whoop and the tomahawk were a very synonym 
of Indian life, the answer is: The battle axe 
and scalping knife were only used against their 
foes of other tribes. No axe was ever raised, 
no bow was ever drawn in fratricidal strife. 
Among themselves they lived at peace. No 
man nor body of men ever sought to rob 
another of his equal share of a common heri- 
tage, nor the sacred right of personal liberty. 

In such communities police courts were 
unknown, and there were no pillories, and no 
prisons; because where there are no oppres- 
sions there need be no punishments. 

That such a social condition, resting pri- 
marily upon what modern economists call 
national ownership of the land, is not alto- 



Ovenvorked 19 

gether visionary becomes clear when we reflect 
that three-fourths of the surface of the earth 
is so held, and that too in peaceful enjoyment 
by all the families of men. No Nicholas of 
Russia nor Duke of Newcastle reserves for the 
exclusive use of himself and family great 
expanses of the ocean with the denizens 
thereof. 

Doubtless if metes and bounds could have 
been fixed and maintained, a handful of self- 
constituted lords of creation would long ere 
this have divided the seas among themselves 
and hung out warnings to "keep off" under 
the penalty of the law (the law of protected 
might). But thanks to Him who made man, 
and knows both his necessities and presump- 
tion, the sea is its own leveler and defender, 
and no man nor combination of men has the 
power to alienate it from the whole family of 
men in whom it is vested. 

Thus not merely the citizens of one nation, 
but every citizen of all nations have each an 
equal right in the waters that cover three- 
fourths of the earth's surface. 

If, then, such joint tenancy is peacefully 
and satisfactorily operative on three-fourths of 
the earth's surface, why should it be thought 
impracticable on the remaining one-fourth? 



20 Overworked 

This is one note of wisdom that comes 
down to us from primitive man, he who was 
nearest to the councils of heaven; another and 
even sweeter note follows not far behind: In 
this kingdom of natural equality life was a 
pleasure, not a punishment. Every occupation 
that brought to men food and covering was a 
source of enjoyment, not of suffering, sorrow 
and hopelessness. They were not as galley 
slaves, or modern mill hands groaning under 
the scourge of task-masters and the tyranny of 
cursed conventionality. They did not agonize 
in the creation of wants that were to breed 
other wants, and those still others, until the 
whole of life should become a forge of cruel 
disappointments, and hopes never to be real- 
ized. Theirs was never a life the chiefest joy 
of which was the anticipation of its ending. 
They sought not to do in a single generation 
all the work of all the generations to come. 
They accepted life as a blessing, not as a curse. 
As they saw their "little brothers" of the earth, 
the air, and the water fed from the hand of a 
common Father without toil, and without dread 
of the coming day, so they believed He 
intended that they, too, should enjoy, without 
care or sorrow, the outspread richness of His 
loving, all-sufficient and ever-present bounty. 



Overworked 2 1 

So thev believed, and so through centuries 
they lived and enjoyed living until there broke 
upon them the new light from across the seas 
denying them the peace and liberty of God's 
plan, and substituting the present-day inferno 
of human greed and oppression, where satis- 
faction is an ignis fatuus and hope forever 
deferred. 

If it be Utopian to heed this voice from the 
wild man of the woods, then what is to be 
said of that which comes from the Judean hills: 
"Consider the ravens, they neither sow nor 
reap, neither have store-house nor barn; and 
God feedeth them: how much more are ye 
better than the fowls?" Are these the words 
of an idle dreamer? 

This world was never intended to be a 
scene of sorrow to man and of enjoyment to 
all else of God's creation. 

Rejoicing is not only consistent with life, 
but it is the purpose and duty of life, and only 
man in his folly and presumption has diverted 
it from its high and holy purpose, making it an 
instrument of torture to the many and a self- 
inflicted curse to those who oppress. 

More hours spent in contemplation and the 
enjoyment of what God has freely given, and 



22 Overworked 

fewer in slaving for that which has never 
brought happiness, is the need of the world. 

We need in our lives a larger share of the 
sweet sanctity of home life, more of the skies 
and the sea, more rocks and waterfalls, more 
song-birds and wild flowers, longer hours under 
the shadow of the trees with the soft pipes of 
Tityru-s. 

This beautiful — Oh, so beautiful world, was 
never made for the rejoicing of a few and the 
torturing dream of the many who, amid the 
darkness and dust of mill and forge, catch no 
note of nature's song of glory. 

From the dark depths of the primeval for- 
ests there comes a voice saying: "Enjoy more, 
labor less. The world is overworked." 



An Kbmeb (gift 



New Haven, Conn., Sept. 6, 1905. 
My Dear Captain Fitzhugh : 

I have been reading a second time your newspaper 
clipping on the Reckless and Intemperate Use of the 
Gift of Speech. Let me thank you for what you have 
said there, and also for the kind words at the bottom 
concerning my article in Harper's. 

Faithfully yours, 

Arthur Hadley, 
(President Yale University). 



AN ABUSED GIFT. 

THE RECKLESS AND INTEMPERATE USE OF 
THE GIFT OF SPEECH. 



Suppose you were stricken dumb, and should 
remain so until you had lost all hope of re- 
covery. And suppose, then, that you were 
offered, with authority, the restoration of 
speech on condition that thereafter your every 
word should be worthjAy, and so far as your 
education admittedly appropriately used. 
Would you refuse th4 offer? And in accept- 
ing it, would you regard it as a hard and hurt- 
ful condition? 

To the contrary, would you not accept it as 
a twofold blessing — the blessing of communi- 
cating with your fellow creatures, and com- 
municating only that which is wholesome and 
edifying? 

If you are of those who are in the habit of 
praising themselves for all their achievements, 
and charging their Creator with all their failures 



26 An Abtised Gift 

and faults, you will doubtless answer: "I 
would gladly accept such an offer, but it would 
be on condition that He who tendered it would 
also see to it that I met the obligation to make 
only a good use of my gift of words." 

In such a case you are willing enough to 
deny your personal sovereignty because its 
exercise would require circumspection and self- 
command — the honoring of the divinity, with 
which everyone is vested. 

But how is it when it comes to criticizing 
your neighbor, or else indulging in obscene, 
profane and blasphemous language? Do you 
acknowledge any lack of sovereignty there? 
Do you then claim dependence upon God 
for power to curse and defame? 

If you do not, to be consistent, you must 
accuse your Creator of having made you sov- 
ereign in evil, but dependent in good— per- 
sonally only capable of doing wrong. The 
good you do, if any, being simply as a machine 
in the hands of God. 

But the truth is, no man admits in action, 
be his words what they may, that he is inca- 
pable of speaking and doing good as well as 
-evil. Every man acts as being sovereign in 
both good and evil until, it may be, his wrong- 
doing brings him into so great trouble that 



An Abused Gift 27 

he cowardly abdicates his sovereignty, and 
tries to take refuge in "God's mistakes." 

Appearing then, as it does, that we are en- 
dowed with the power, in greater or less de- 
gree, of rightly using the gift of speech, and 
seeing how gladly we would enter into a cov- 
nant so to do, rather than lose it, is it not 
passing strange that we so recklessly and shock- 
ingly abuse so great a blessing? 

It is painful to contemplate the world of 
harm that our words have done, and the empire 
of good that they have failed to do. 

It is scarcely conceivable that a being who 
is endowed with the power to communicate, if 
he will, only good to his fellow man, and that 
by means involving neither hardship nor sacri- 
fice, should ignore the privilege, and to the 
contrary use so inestimable a gift far more for his 
hurt and degradation than his happiness and 
ennobling. 

It may be that some one who may possibly 
read these reflections has had the misfortune 
to endure, in a military prison, or jury room, 
constrained and unavoidable association with a 
promiscuous company of men. If so, he has 
doubtlessly observed that in such a group there 
are always one or two men, at least, who seem 
to be incapable of saying, or suggesting any- 



28 An Abused Gift 

thing that is profitable, or even innocuous; but 
who, to the contrary, seek to dominate social 
intercourse, turning it into channels reeking 
with filth and obscenity. 

It has been my misfortune to be for days in 
contact with such men, and with a conscious- 
ness of a full share of the lower tendencies of 
human nature, I have nevertheless found it 
impossible to comprehend the mental attitude 
of one who can lie upon his bed in the stillness 
of the night with such an association of horrible 
ideas, and then awake in the morning to renew 
and continue the infernal orgy. Or could I 
even conceive that possible for his own delec- 
tation and that of the few who might be in 
sympathy with him, I find it quite impossible 
to understand how an intelligent being who 
claims to be not a demon, can be so cruel, or 
inconsiderate of others present, not constituted 
as he is, as to impose upon them an infliction 
so obviously abhorrent and intolerable. 

Imagine, if you can, the ocean lying be- 
tween one who makes such use of the gift of 
speech and him who wrote, "Lead Kindly 
Light," and you will have some idea of your 
privilege and responsibility in the use of words. 

But this, while the worst and lowest abuse 
of language, is but one of a great many. 



An Abused Gift 29 

Another phase of such abuse, though far 
less evil, and one quite peculiar to young girls, 
is the frequent and often absurd use of the su- 
perlative, and of heroic adjectives. If these 
young ladies would only regard their vocabu- 
lary as the artisan regards his kit of tools— each 
piece being for its own appropriate work, how 
beautiful would be the edifice of their social in- 
tercourse. 

The dentist does not use a crow-bar for plug- 
ging teeth, nor the workman a broad-axe for 
sharpening shoe pegs; neither does he use a 
sledge for driving tacks. And yet a young girl 
will dive down into her kit of words, and drag 
out the biggest thing in it, awful, to describe 
the beauty of a bit of lace or a hat-pin. 

Having used up that word on a bit of wearing 
apparel, I often wonder what she does when 
she comes to describe the descent of the fires 
of Mt. Pelee down upon the hapless city of 
St. Pierre, or some mighty, soulless comet 
stretching far across the arch of the heavens 
The same word will not do; for, like a special 
tool wrongly used, it has lost its point and 
edge, and fails to do the work for which it was 
solely intended. 

It was my privilege to have been in daily 
contact with Gen. R. E. Lee for many months- 



OK 



An Abused Gift 



in which time I heard him speak on many and 
various subjects, often under conditions calcu- 
lated to evoke strong and vehement expres- 
sion, and yet, in the whole of such association, 
I cannot recall a single instance of the use on 
his part of an exaggerated or superlative word. 
No word that he ever used could well be re- 
placed by another without detracting from the 
sense and force of his deliverance. 

Could I now associate with the memory of 
Gen. Lee such expressions as: "I thought I 
should have died a-laughing. " or: "He is the 
meanest man in the world," I should think of 
him with far less of veneration than I do; for 
it would have argued a degree of carelessness, 
and a lack of circumspection which would sug- 
gest a doubt of his reliability in more impor- 
tant matters. 

If one who knows the meaning of words 
will honestly review his life for the past day, or 
for that matter the past year, I very much 
question whether he will discover a single in- 
stance in which the abstract superlative could 
have been appropriately employed by him. And 
yet, in the year he will find that he, or more 
particularly she, has used it, probably, hun- 
dreds of times. 



An Abused Gift 31 

It is doubtful whether anything, not except- 
ing slang, so emasculates, and impoverishes 
language as the very common, and often ab- 
surd use of extravagant, and superlative words. 

My dear young lady, if your little shaggy 
dog is "the sweetest thing in the world," what 
have you left to properly describe your mother? 
And besides, you have seen very little of the 
world, in which are many beautiful things, 
some one of which, possibly, may be even 
sweeter than your little dishonored poodle. 
You have missed your train, and you petu- 
lantly exclaim: "It is perfectly terrible!" 
Already you have said that your latest gen- 
tleman caller was "awfully nice." What word, 
then, have you left to express your feelings 
touching the burning of the steamer Slocum 
with its thousand or more passengers, or the 
destruction of the Iroquois theater in Chicago? 
Do you not see that you are using your tall- 
est vase for ordinary flowers while your bunch 
of American Beauties remains unprovided for? 

Dear young people, did I feel competent 
to do so, I should advise you to always use the 
simplest, and most temperate language possi- 
ble in describing any ordinary thing or occur- 
rence, carefully reserving your heroic words for 
heroic occasions. 



32 An Abused Gift 

Otherwise you make a muddle of language, 
doing violence to every principle of proportion, 
to say nothing of good taste and truth. 

The criminal use of the gift of speech, to 
which I have first addressed myself in this ar- 
ticle, proceeds from either a degraded nature 
unrestrained, or from habitual low and vicious 
association. On the other hand the habit of 
indulging in exaggerated expressions, and the 
senseless use of superlatives, is plainly traceable 
to poverty of vocabulary, or else to a lack of 
nice linguistic and moral perceptions. 

In a large degree, it all dates back to a 
neglected childhood — the time when a limited 
command of language tempts the child to use 
very big words to emphasize very little ideas. 

The correction of this evil would impose no 
hardships upon the parent of ordinary intelli- 
gence, were it not that example is stronger 
than precept; and that the child is more apt to 
follow its parents than obey them. 

Thus have I touched upon but two of the 
many phases of the question suggested by the 
caption of this article; my purpose having 
been not to write an essay on the abuse of 
language, but merely to offer an outline of 
such an essay as might be written by one more 
competent. 



damMtng. 



i. 

II. 

3te tf Olatttranj In % tttetdjttuja nf aUytfat ? 



GAMBLING. 
I. 

CHANCE VS. PROVIDENCE. 

It is often remarked that the whole of life 
is a game of chance, which differs only in 
degree from what is called gambling. 

This is so far erroneous that it is exactly 
the opposite of the truth; one is absolute cer- 
tainty, the other absolute uncertainty. 

The whole of life, like all else in the uni- 
verse, is under the direction of the Creator 
and Ruler of all things. 

For many years, I can't say how many, 
He has run this intricate piece of machinery 
without hitch or failure. The man of the stone 
age saw, as we see, the sun and stars rise and 
set, and in their myriad courses unravel the 
tangled web of the heavens, each in its appoint- 
ed time, without collision or even a jar. Seed 
time and harvest were not less sure, year by 
year, to provide bread for his necessities than 



36 Gambli?ig 

they now are for ours. He knew, as we must 
know, that He who made the grain to grow 
was not some blind demon of chance, but a 
being of infinite wisdom and perfect order, 
who had in all things a purpose which could 
not admit of miscarriage or failure. 

It is inconceivable that the Creator could 
err, and error is only absent from righteous- 
ness. In all else there is an element of falli- 
bility. He, therefore, who commits his keep- 
ing to the Creator has eliminated all possibility 
of chance from his life. He may pitch his 
crop and fail to garner, but God has not failed. 
He is a God of ultimates, and in denying him 
a harvest for a season, He is only paving the 
way to nobler, better things. 

It is hardly reasonable to demand an hourly 
vindication of the righteousness of God, the 
fulfillment of whose purposes are infinite in 
time and in glory. We must know that He is 
guiding us through a country, every path of 
which He knows well, and of which we know 
nothing. We would naturally rather take the 
road across the plain than scale the rugged 
mountain side. But He knows that the smooth 
road leads to death, and the rugged one to 
life, where He is, and where He would have us 
come. 



Gambling 37 

In what is called the chance of a crop, 
there are at least two obvious designs: The 
first to teach us the oneness of man; the other 
to make us know the supremacy of God. 

Mankind, in the sight of the Creator, is a 
unit, all of one family; and the time has never 
come when there was not food enough and to 
spare in the world to supply the reasonable 
needs of every human or other being on the 
face of the whole earth. 

In permitting the local failure of crops, one 
manifest purpose is to teach man that he is his 
brother's keeper, and that in his necessity he 
must divide with him. And so, thereby, love 
is engendered, which is the principle of life. 

Another is to impress upon the sower his 
ultimate dependence upon Hjm who alone 
giveth life. To show him that ©si*human wis- 
dom nor foresight can take the place of Omni- 
science. 

The husbandman who plows and scatters 
intelligently and faithfully cannot lose. He 
is in covenant with the God of nature, the 
Infallible One. And though He withholds the 
harvest for a season, it will come as surely as 
the recurrence of occultations and conjunc- 
tions, or the return of the sun to awake the 



38 Gambling 

earth to life and melody, and fill it full of 
sweet abundance. 

Eternity is our heritage; it is long, and it 
affords opportunity for the fulfillment of God's 
part in every covenant with man in its exact 
time and place. As we count duration, it may 
be a long way off; but he who sows in obedi- 
ence and trust will reap his appropriate reward, 
and that at a time when he shall see most 
clearly its wisdom and its beauty. 

The farmer who plants his crop knows that 
he is not bucking against chance, but obedi- 
ently trusting in an Infallible Creator. No act 
could be wiser or more dignifying to man. 

The man who gambles is trusting to a func- 
tionless, impersonal nothing, called chance; or 
else to his skill to get the advantage of a 
brother. No act could be more irrational on 
the one hand, or more degrading on the other. 

The results of all investigation show that in 
the whole universe there is not an observed 
phenomenon which is the creature of chance. 
Surely, then, it is an insult to the majesty of 
heaven to submit to chance the issues of life 
which the King has made subject only to His 
righteous laws. 

As far as the east is from the west, so far is 
trusting in God from trusting in chance. 



GAMBLING. 



II. 

IS IT CONTRARY TO THE TEACHINGS OF 
CHRIST ? 

If by any possible construction two wrongs 
may make a right, then gambling, as it affects 
only the principals, may not be wrong. If 
they are persons of equal honesty, and fairly 
matched, under a clear agreement, they may 
engage in a game of chance in which there 
would be no wrong per se. But the same con- 
clusion would apply to duelling, or a suicide 
pact, where two persons enter into and execute 
an "honorable" agreement to commit murder. 

This is all fair as far as the integrity of a 
contract is concerned. But can the purpose of 
the contract, as affecting each party to it, be 
regarded otherwise than evil ? They have 
agreed, and honorably observed the agree- 
ment, to do violence to one another, or else 
terminate their own existences. That, surely, 



40 Gambling 

is not in harmony with the teachings of the 
New Testament. 

But you say: "In games of chance it is a 
mere question of skill opposed to skill." 

I will answer that by citing an incident 
that came under my observation a few days 
ago: A white boy challenged a much smaller 
black boy to play for "keeps." The little 
fellow gladly accepted the challenge; and in 
a very short time the white boy had all the 
marbles of both. Skill against skill, was it? 
Every gambler, whether professionally and 
openly so, or hidden under the veneer of fash- 
ionable society, will have no difficulty in mak- 
ing the application. 

But let us suppose the two boys equally 
matched, and they play until one of them has 
won all the marbles of the other. It has been 
done by a perfectly understood and honorably 
carried out agreement. But is it, therefore, 
right in its consequences? Let us see: One 
boy now has no marbles, and very naturally he 
wants some. But being only a child he has no 
bank account to draw upon. He, therefore, 
goes to his father (more likely his mother) and 
asks for money with which to buy some. If 
his mother responds, he has already submitted 
to chance money that did not belong to him. 



Gambling 41 

On the other hand, should his mother refuse 
him, being human and glorying in the chance 
of getting something for nothing, he at once 
bestirs himself to get hold of what he needs 
by borrowing, or otherwise, and again pro- 
ceeds to place in jeopardy the property of 
another. 

A class of men who follow the races knows 
all about that. Is this not in violation of the 
doctrines of Jesus of Nazareth? 

If it be said, as it often is, "I believe, 
somehow, that gambling is wrong, but I have 
failed to find any definite commandment 
against it in the Christian dispensation," it 
may be answered: The Christian dispensation 
is not one of commandments but of principles, 
the chief of which is love. 

The dominating idea pervading the teach- 
ings of Christ is summed up in the admoni- 
tion: "Do unto others as you would have 
them do unto you." 

Now I know you will make haste to say: 
"Exactly, and that is what the parties to a 
game of chanee do; they agree to accept the 
treatment they accord. 

Yes, but who are the parties to a game of 
chance? 



42 Gambling 

You and another man, both honorable as to 
gaming contracts, play together. You are 
both salaried men, each receiving a hundred 
dollars a month. Your friend (so-called) is a 
man with wife and children, and so are you. 
On the last day of the month you have both 
received your pay, and before going home 
you sit down to a game of cards. You play 
because you like it. It is an act purely of 
self-indulgence without relation to the interests 
of others who may be involved. 

Midnight comes and your "friend" goes 
home without a dollar. He has no money 
accumulation; a large and sickly family uses 
it up about as fast as he can make it. The 
next day the monthly accounts for food and 
clothing, servant hire, fuel, and everything 
else remain unpaid; and the poor mother and 
children have the hardship and mortification 
to endure. They, too, were (unconsulted) par- 
ties to that agreement, as your wife and chil- 
dren were. And so, on both sides you were 
risking money the great bulk of which be- 
longed to your families, and not to yourselves 
individually. 

When you face your wife with two hundred 
dollars, and he faces his wife with not a dollar, 
do you in your heart feel that you would have 



Gambling 43 

that man do unto you and your family as you 
have done unto him and his family? Have 
you not, indeed, not only violated the Golden 
Rule, but conspired with that man to rob his 
family and creditors, or your family and cred- 
itors? 

But, you say, the luck may be the other 
way next time. So it may be, but that does 
not affect the principle involved; and besides 
that, bread and clothing, fuel and rent are cer- 
tainties, and certainties cannot be settled by 
chance— they do not fluctuate with the fortune 
of the gaming table. No man will accept in 
payment of his account your chances next 
time. 

Very well; we will take an extreme case in 
the opposite direction and assume that you 
and your "friend" are both bachelors; that 
you are each worth a hundred thousand dol- 
lars, and neither has any one who will be dis- 
tressed in consequence of his losses. 

Here, plainly, the obvious wrong lies in the 
perniciousness of a bad example. But that is 
not all. If you persist in being matched against 
one another, the time will likely come when 
one will have the money of both, and the 
other will be an old, broken-down, discredited 
man, borrowing and risking any money that 



44 Gambling 

he may chance get hold of with utter disre- 
gard of the welfare of friends who have come 
to his help, many of them doubtless men who 
would not feel themselves justified in submit- 
ting to chance their own honest earnings. 

Such an outcome is scarcely in consonance 
with the teachings of Christ, which not only 
forbid the doing of an injury to our neighbor, 
but also requires that, so far as we can, we 
shall not permit him to do an injury to him- 
self. Certainly that we shall not, by any act 
of ours, lead him into temptation. 

And it is in this aspect of games of chance 
that most harm may be found. You may be 
one of those who are not inclined to excesses 
of any kind, and in gambling, as in all else, 
you do not go beyond the limit of safety so 
far as your individual welfare is concerned. 
But your "friend" may be, and frequently is, 
differently constituted. He may have a pas- 
sion for gambling which is well-nigh irresist- 
ible, and which always carries him to reckless 
excess. In such a case there is no equality, 
even if that made right, but you are using 
your strength to ruin a brother. 

I know a man, now nearly 70 years of age, 
who has never taken a chance in any game, 
professional, social, or church, and who does 



Gambling 45 

not know how to play a single such game of 
any kind; and yet he assures me that, perhaps, 
the strongest passion of his nature has ever 
been to indulge in the fascinations of games of 
chance. Had evil counsellors, or bad exemp- 
lars, when he was a boy, succeeded in stifling 
his convictions to the contrary, and had started 
him (possibly in the home circle) in the seduc- 
tive field of chance, in all probability he would 
long ere this have been a miserable victim of 
those who dishonor the principles of Christ, 
and contradict the exhortation of the great 
expounder of his doctrines, St. Paul, that: 
"We then that are strong ought to bear the 
infirmities of the weak, and not to please our- 
selves." Bear the infirmities of the weak ! 
Why, it is the infirmities of the weak upon 
which the cannibalism of the gambler lives. 

Do you say: "Such reasoning applies to 
many other things in man's dealings with 
man." I answer: Surely, and wherever it 
applies that thing is also wrong, and in viola- 
tion of the one only commandment of the new 
dispensation, and which stands out before all 
else in the very life of Christ, namely: "Thou 
shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." 

You and I may try to justify ourselves in 
encouraging and taking advantage of a broth- 



46 Gambling 

er's weakness; but one who knew the Master's 
spirit and lived very near to him, has said: 
"Wherefore, if meat make my brother to 
offend, I will eat no flesh while the world 
standeth, lest I make my brother to offend." 
No commandment, indeed, against gamb- 
ling? The whole tenor and spirit of the New 
Testament is a commandment to love. The 
whole spirit of gambling is selfishness, cruel 
and unmitigated. 



Not #n lEaag. 



NOT SO EASY. 



It was a tired Irish laborer who said : "For 
a nate, clane and aisy job, I'd rather be a 
bishop." 

There are others who are ready to express 
themselves in equivalent language; but they 
are of the uninformed unthinking contingent 
of society. 

A long, and somewhat crucial experience 
with religious teachers of all creeds and de- 
nominations, justifies me in saying that 
heavenly considerations aside, they do more 
good to the world, for less pay than any other 
class of educated men. 

This generalization does* not include the 
unworthy members of the calling, of whom it 
may be truthfully said there are not a few. It 
does not apply to the young man of spineless 
organism, who enters the ministry to escape a 
manly meeting of those hardships and trials 
which are essential to the discipline of a true 
life. It does not apply to him who is mani- 
festly more resigned to fleece-lined slippers, 



50 Not So Easy 

and the adulation of the ladies, than to the 
sharp edges of the rugged cross. Neither does 
it include the man of maturer years, whose 
ambition, as noted by the world, chiefly con- 
cerns his own personal welfare, and social ex- 
altation. 

My remark relates only to the true servants 
of the God of Righteousness; but of whom 
there are enough to raise the average standard 
of pastoral living far above that of any other 
calling on earth. 

When we reflect that preachers are but 
men, with all the weaknesses and infirmaries 
incident thereto, it becomes a matter of amaze- 
ment that their lives should, as a very general 
rule, be marked with such exceptional purity, 
integrity, and beneficence. It has the stamp 
of a living miracle in attestation of the divinity 
of their calling. It is the highest and most 
incontrovertible evidence of the truth of that 
which they proclaim. 

The most prominent agnostic of this country 
once said to me: "O, yes, these fellows 
(preachers) are moral, and kind and all that 
because it pertains to their profession, and if 
they don't keep up appearances at least, 
they'll lose their job." 



Not So Easy 51 

I thought then, as I think now; surely no 
higher tribute could be paid a calling than to 
say that the world expects of it the exercise of 
purity and righteousness; and that without 
such it would not be tolerated. 

As a purely human affair, it would pay a 
people to tax themselves to maintain such an 
order in their midst for the good it would 
do society alone, not looking an inch beyond 
the present life. 

Certainly there is something more than 
common in an order that has been constituted 
by the world the custodian and exemplifier of 
both its operative and mystical standards of 
life. 

It is pertinent to ask, if preaching is a mere 
money-making calling like any other, why has 
it so much less of lawlessness, vice, and im- 
purity than any other ? 

There is certainly a principle there, whether 
divine or not divine, that distinguishes it from 
every other calling, and by common consent, 
constitutes it the conservitor, and safe guard, 
of society. 

Few persons who keep aloof from preachers 
have any sort of just conception of the magni- 
tude and variety of their responsibilities and 
labors. They do not realize how compara- 



52 Not So Easy 

tively small a proportion of their time and 
labor is bestowed upon the pulpit and the 
chancel, and how much is consumed in out- 
side work, and in meeting all sorts of de- 
mands from all sorts of people, without, as 
well as within their own folds. It may be 
safely said that an earnest, faithful, preacher, 
hardly ever has an hour that he can, certainly, 
call his own. 

None but those who have social and pro- 
fessional relations with preachers can ade- 
quately understand the severity of the tax 
upon their sympathies, as well as upon their 
energies of mind and body. Neither can they 
comprehend the magnitude of the demand 
upon their purses, and the frequency of their 
responses. 

My observation has been that, as a class, 
preachers are much better than other men. 
They are more temperate and circumspect than 
other men. They are of purer, cleaner lives. 
They are gentler, more uniformly courteous, 
and readier to take up, and bear, a brother's 
burden. 

Now, unless we admit the presence here of 
a super-human, or divine principle, how is this 
to be accounted for ? Surely this is not the 
legitimate product of an ordinary money- 



Not So Easy 53 

making calling. Or, if it is, then for that 
reason alone, it has a claim upon the highest 
respect and veneration of the world, and is the 
nearest thing to the ministry of heaven that 
has ever been devised by, or bestowed upon 
man. 

These men stand continually upon the fron- 
tier line of life, and keep the world in touch 
with the spirit of the realms beyond. 

They are commissioned to observe and in- 
terpret the tokens of God's providence toward 
men. And whether it be the God of the Bible, 
or the "unknown God," your God, or my God, 
or some other man's God, it's all one, they 
represent all the God there is; and their mis- 
sion is to bring us into harmony with Him. 

This is a matter that equally concerns us 
all, and the gravity and importance of it 
should, in our eyes, invest the preacher with a 
dignity and veneration above that accorded to 
men of ordinary callings. 

But, as was said in the beginning, these 
words apply only to the faithful, honest, self- 
renouncing servants of the Living God, and 
not by any possible interpretation to the indo- 
lent, self-indulgent and otherwise unworthy. 



IGtfr In ICtfr. 



Hotel Gerard, New York City 
June 28th, 1905. 
My Dear Captain Fitzhugh: 

A thousand thanks for your exquisite call from ''The 
Outer Harbor" where I am sure you get glimpses of the 
"Inner Harbor" where you and I would be, and to which 
I am drifting very fast. 

As I grow older, and the joys and hopes of the world 
about us pale and lose their value, I am sure that our 
right to expect a safe arrival in that "Inner Harbor," of 
which, by faith, you have attained so exquisite a view, 
can only be acquired by paying for it in the coin of love 
to God and our fellow creatures. I am sure that too 
little stress is laid on the duty to love rather than compel 
our enemies by force to show justice and mercy. 

I cannot, even by faith see the "Inner Harbor," 
but like yourself, I know it is there in assured and smiling 
peace; and I feel thankful not only that it is there, but 
that an old and faithful Confederate, through the God 
given coin he has paid, has been given that assurance 
with which he can comfort others that it awaits them, 
and can depict the "Bliss without compare" which we 
are to attain. 

There are some words which are "Apples of gold in 
pictures of Silver," and you have spoken these, and I 
congratulate you and myself upon them. 

Believe me, dear Sir, 

Affectionately yours, 

Varina Jefferson Davis. 



LIFE TO LIFE. 

THROUGH THE CHANGELESS BOND OF 
NATURAL OBJECTS WE BEST HOLD 
COMMUNION WITH OUR DE- 
PARTED FRIENDS. 

In the tender light of a late summer's 
afternoon, as I was taking my accustomed 
walk toward the western limits of the city, I 
was joined by an old man. 

"Which way, comrade," said he. 

"I am going," I replied, "to the city's 
silent grove to sit in the shadow of the great 
trees and hear the birds sing." 

"I, too," he answered, "am going that 
way, but not to sit in the shadow of the trees, 
nor listen to the song of the birds. I am going 
out to be with my friends. They are nearly 
all now resting there — all that I loved most." 

With the same spirit, but different opera- 
tions, we were wending our way to that peace- 
ful city of the dead. We were both seeking 



58 Life to Life 

companionship with the now silent friends of 
our younger days. He would find it in yearn- 
ing communion with the responseless dust and 
ashes of the grave. I would find it in the ties 
that bind boyhood to old age — the changeless 
song of the birds, the sad, familiar voice of 
the gentle winds among the swaying boughs, 
the tint and perfume of every flower after its 
kind, the ceaseless shifting of the passing 
clouds, and the restful calm of the blue be- 
yond. 

Thus would I seek the companions of my 
younger days. I would not look for them 
amid the silent dust of the graves, but in the 
living, speaking, rejoicing objects of our one- 
time common love. 

We have no fellowship with the deserted 
dust beneath the sod. In these beautiful, liv- 
ing repositories only do we meet, as in other 
days, and rejoice in sweet, unclouded com- 
munion. 

Among the children of men, he who dies 
is seen no more; his similitude in form and 
voice appears no more on earth. At best the 
son is but a faint suggestion of his father, and 
the daughter but a sad reminder of her mother. 
Of all the boys and girls with whom we played 
some sixty years ago, not one, nor the likeness 



Life to Life 59 

of one departed, is now reproduced in all the 
multitudes about us. Every vestige is gone 
from the earth, and the dust to which their 
bodies have returned only mocks our yearning 
hearts. 

Not so those constant bonds of mortal spir- 
its — our mutual friends of by-gone days. 

Together we have looked upon the great 
moss-covered rocks, my companion and I, and 
in silence wondered and worshipped. And as 
they answered us then, so now they answer 
me. 

Together we have stretched out in the 
shadow of the "broad-spreading beech," and 
listened to the plaintive voice of the turtle 
dove, or the riotous screaming of the saucy 
jay. With one soul we have heard the vesper 
chant of the mocking bird, and the faltering 
lullaby of the drowsy thrush. Those days are 
gone to return no more; and generations of 
mocking birds and saucy jays have come and 
passed away; but in faultless reproduction we 
still listen to the same, familiar notes, and still 
we feel the presence of our absent friend, 
whose borrowed dust, once so dear, has re- 
turned to the earth whence it came. 

How often, at the close of day, have we 
sat together upon the river's bank and listened 



60 Life to Life 

to the measured stroke of the boatman's oars 
as wearily he forged his homeward way. Or 
else, from the meadow stretching far away, 
have marked the call of the anxious quail to 
her scattered brood benighted. The boatman's 
stroke is heard no more, and his bending oars 
are silent now; but the ceaseless splash of the 
stranded waves still break upon the ear, and 
the anxious quail, in unchanged notes, still 
calls her scattered brood. And as he and I 
heard her then, so now, alone, I hear her 
plaintive call. And yet not alone, for spirit 
answereth to spirit; and now, as then, together 
in the closing hours of day, we seem to listen 
to that mother's low, distressful call. 

Our spirits are not united in death but in 
life. The spirit which is without the grave 
and the body that is within it, have no com- 
mon bond of union. 

The changeless note and flight of the old- 
time birds; the trees, the rocks, the skies, and 
the immortal soul of boyhood songs — in them 
alone we meet our friends; and there we com- 
mune in oneness of spirit and oneness of wor- 
ship. 

The sublimest, tenderest being who has 
ever talked with man— He who stooped the 
lowest to lift the highest— the blessed Savior 



Life to Life 61 

of mankind, when He would speak the depth 
of His Father's love, told those about Him of 
how He cared for the fowls of the air and 
honored the lillies of the field. And ever since 
that time the VJirds and the flowers have been 
the world's sweetest messengers from the heart 
of a loving Father; and in their companion- 
ionship has been the meeting place of spirit 
with spirit — that which is in bondage with that 
which is free. 

Our companions fade and pass away, but 
their spirits still remain, and still together we 
lie in the shadow of the trees and under the 
same sweet, bird-enchanted spell, commune as 
in days of yore. 

And this is why my comrade and I often 
seek, toward the setting sun, this holy place of 
rest, where mortal caskets mouldering lie, 
whence deathless souls have fled, — he, through 
the unanswering dust, to commune with the 
dead; I, through the boyhood bond of the 
happy, changeless birds, to find fellowship 
with the living. 



®i|0 ifiSfjpr #0rial ICtfe. 



St. John's Parish. 

Stamford, Conn., Jan. 24, 1906. 
My Dear Capt. Fitzhugh : 

I thank you exceedingly for your little leaflet, "In 
the Outer Harbor" and "The Higher Social Life." 
Both essays have touched me very much, and I cannot 
help asking you if you will not send me two or three 
more copies. 

"The Higher Social Life" seems to be especially 
appropriate for certain people in trouble. 
Yours faithfully, 

(Rev.) Chas. Morris Addison. 



THE HIGHER SOCIAL LIFE 

DEATH SHOULD NOT END INTERCOURSE 
WITH THOSE WE LOVE. 

Is physical contact, or apprehension, essen- 
tial to social intercourse ? If so, wherein are 
we better off than the beasts of the field ? If 
not so, why do we mourn so hopelessly for 
those whom we miscall our dead ? 

Belief in the immortality of the thought 
and affections of man is universal, involuntary, 
and necessitous. And immortality carries 
with it the idea of infinity. In youth such 
ultimate reflections as these do not obtrude, 
as they do not seem to press for solution; but 
when the miles begin to lengthen, and the 
days to shorten, and men are careful to tell us 
how young we are looking, then we come to 
realize that this wonderful life of ours is but a 
little incident in the course of an endless ex- 
istence; an incident, it is true, of exceeding 
great importance, and, reasonably, fraught 
with consequences unsurpassed by any future 



66 The Higher Social Life 

event of like duration, but how short, how- 
fleeting; and especially to those who have the 
privilege of looking around them upon moth- 
ers and fathers to whom they have given 
earthly being. 

If, then, there is immortality, as compared 
with the incident of life, it is entitled to a 
consideration as far exceeding that accorded 
our earthly existence as eternity exceeds in 
duration a few score years or less. 

Why then do we attach such undue agoniz- 
ing importance to these temporal separations 
from our loved ones and friends ? Are they 
any less our loved ones and friends ? Do we 
not love them still ? Do they not love us 
still ? Do we not love them with a purer love 
than when they were present in the flesh ? 
And do they not love us as mortals cannot 
love ? Are they, indeed, very far away ? Are 
they not nearer to us now than then, nearer to 
the pleadings of our poor, silent hearts ? Who 
knows to the contrary ? 

Where is heaven ? Where is the next 
world ? Are there not ministering spirits ? It 
is a sad heart that answers no. And who are 
these ministering spirits ? Do any know your 
needs and mine better than they who have 
left our hearthstones ? Could any tell with 



The Higher Social Life 67 

deeper tenderer sympathy of our yearnings, 
our sorrows, and those "bitternesses of heart 
with which the stranger inter-meddleth not?" 
Could any know as well as they where to 
apply the balm ? 

You can't see them, you can't hear them, 
you can't touch them ? 

You have a married daughter who lives a 
thousand miles away from you; is she any less 
your daughter because you can't see her, and 
hear her, and touch her ? Do you love her 
less ? Can you think of her as loving you less ? 
It may be your privilege to see her a few days 
in each year for a few, very few years. Is 
your life in and with her bound up solely in 
those few days of physical contact ? Do those 
few uncertain days count for more than all the 
years that you have to spend, even in this 
world, in purely spiritual communion with 
her ? Surely not. If, therefore, in this life 
you are sustained and comforted by spiritual 
correspondence, will you now give her up 
because she is gone, possibly, a little farther 
away, just a step, and is occupying another 
"mansion in her Father's house ?" 

It is the form, the body that you want to 
see ? Would you recognize in your daughter 
of thirty the little girl that pinned the dress 



68 The Higher Social Life 

upon her doll at your feet ? A few years sep- 
aration, and mother and daughter would pass 
each other as strangers upon the street. There 
remains not an atom of that little body in 
your child of today; she has gone into an- 
other and larger house; and yet she is still 
your child, just as loveable, just as loving. 
Her new surroundings do not alienate the ten- 
der yearning of a mother's heart, neither do 
they touch the sweet, incommunicable loyalty 
of a daughter's love. 

Plainly then, it is not the body, but the 
spirit that is your child; it is that that you 
cling to, the never dying intelligence, the only 
true being. 

Can't see her, can't touch her, can't talk 
with her ? Can you see God ? Can you touch 
Him ? Can you talk with Him ? And yet is 
God dead ? 

When your child was in the visible world, 
but a thousand miles away from you, did you 
not commune with her ? Did she not com- 
mune with you ? In your solitude you would 
go over with her every passing event; you 
took her into the secret places of your heart; 
you saw her smile, and you smiled with her; 
a shadow would pass over your heart, and in 
her far away countenance you could see it re- 



Ihe Higher Social Life 69 

fleeted back to you. She rejoiced with you, 
and with you bowed in sorrow, and thus 
moments and hours were spent in the sweetest 
intercourse between mother and daughter, 
with an empire between. 

But what of now, now when the emanci- 
pated spirit, freed from earthly hinderances, 
and with a horizon broadened and beautified, 
that also includes the old home on earth, 
turns motherward her tender, loving gaze ? 
Do you respond: "No, you are not my 
daughter, my daughter is dead?" What, dead 
because she has gone a few days before you 
into real life ? Dead because she has re- 
turned to the earth and the air a few shreds of 
conventional dress that, for a few days parade, 
she borrowed of their store ? Dead ? If ever 
dead, it was while here in this "house of nar- 
row walls." 

No, a thousand times no, your child is not 
dead. She lives, and in her life carries yours 
with a love and a consecration that you have 
never known, nor while here, can ever com- 
prehend. A ministering spirit ? Yes, why 
not ? In the stillness of your communions, do 
you not often feel beatific constraints of spirit 
testifying to her glorified presence ? Not 
some inane creation of the spook-enchanted 



70 The Higher Social Life 

hypochondriac, but a real, live, joyous being, 
whose sublimated nature is ever vibrant with 
sympathetic responsiveness, and whose mis- 
sion, it may be, is to encourage you into a life 
fuller of love and unselfishness, and more in 
harmony with the sweet beatitudes of her own 
blessed estate. 

It is there that mother and daughter with 
expurgated spirits, meet; there in a sphere 
more exalted, and in an atmosphere where 
clouds intervene not, and every gift and every 
passion is consecrated to the cause of 
righteousness. 

O, poor, pathetic mother, why give up your 
child ! Why not hold to a reality just now 
made so sublime, so much more precious, and 
so eternally enduring ? 

Yes, talk with your child, tell her all your 
feelings, withhold nothing; and know that she 
responds; not indeed, through the low med- 
ium of the flesh, but as God responds, through 
that spiritual correspondence, which is the 
first token of real life. 

Have you no unaccustomed feelings of late, 
now and then a strange, unbidden suggestion 
touching your conduct, or ministering to your 
comfort ? Does there not obtrude, here and 
there, some new conception of the dignity and 



The Higher Social Life 71 

glory of life, and the part that you should 
perform ? Are there not times, new to you, 
when your whole being, as a flake of snow 
on the ocean's bosom, seems to melt into the 
great sea of God's love? Then, O, mother, 
rightly interpret these tokens as messages 
from your dear ministering spirit commissioned 
by Him who uttered, for our comfort, those 
incomparable words: "I have come that they 
might have life, and that they might have it 
more abundantly." 



PwstBtent 3ftotttttg 



PERSISTENT IDENTITY. 

SOME THOUGHTS ON RECOGNITION IN THE 
SPIRIT WORLD. 

It is hard to see how those who accept the 
New Testament as a statement of truth can 
resist a belief in recognition in the world to 
come. 

Christ, who was here to lead us into truth, 
would not permit us by scenes in which He 
took part to be betrayed into false conclusions. 
Certainly by His most impressive illustrations 
He would not permit us to be led astray or left 
in a state of perplexity and uncertainty. 

This, then, being admitted for the pur- 
poses of this article, there is but one inference 
that can be drawn from the incident on the 
Mount of Transfiguration, and that is, that we 
do not lose our identity by passing from this 
world into another neither immediately nor 
after the lapse of hundreds, even thousands of 
years; for at that time, of the two men, Moses 



76 Persistent Identity. 

and Elijah, whose appearance upon the scene 
is recorded, the first had been dead two thou- 
sand years, and the other nearly a thousand. 

The recorder of this incident makes it appear 
that these long-dead men were recognized even 
by Peter who, of course, had never seen them 
in the flesh; but his knowledge of them may 
have been imparted at the time by the words 
of Christ which he heard. This, however, is 
not material. The important fact is that Christ 
recognized them and treated them as sovereign 
entities, and not as of the essence of some 
vague Nirvana. Moreover, these men whose 
entrances into the spirit world were a thousand 
years apart, and who of necessity had never 
met in this world, in their wanderings through 
the limitless Elysian fields had come together, 
and inferentially, by some spiritual token un- 
known to the flesh, were made known to one 
another. 

This, it is true, concerns but two men, 
Moses and Elijah; but the incident is one of 
the broadest scope involving extreme phases 
of the question under discussion, and as it is 
the only occurrence in the life of the Great 
Teacher illustrating intermundane relation- 
ships, it must be accepted as being of gen- 
eral application. 



Persistent Identity 77 

Here, then, in court-room language, we 
might "rest our case" as proven beyond the 
possibility of reasonable cavil by the testimony 
of witnesses absolutely unimpeachable from 
a Christian standpoint; but in order to avoid 
the chaos of conflicting inferences to be drawn 
from a thought so great and so suggestive, the 
subject will be pursued, if possible, to its equi- 
librium in the scheme of omniscient economy. 

The first question that suggests itself is: 
What is the nature of identity? 

That it is not physical is at once obvious, 
for no physical thing remains the same from 
one year to another. The child who knew its 
mother only as a young woman, and the child 
who did not know her until she had passed the 
meridian of life, could not both by any com- 
mon physical token recognize her in a new 
state of being. If she appeared as an old 
woman, the first would not know her; and if 
as a young woman, the other would not know 
her. Neither would the friends of her youth 
only and the friends of her old age only agree 
as to her identity did she appear either as an 
old woman or a young woman. 

These and a thousand other difficulties con- 
front us on the threshold of a discussion of the 
question in its material aspect. Indeed, in 



78 Persistent Identity 

any view of the matter, difficulties appear 
which cannot be resolved upon any hypothesis 
based upon human experience; and the confu- 
sion and painful perplexity occasioned by 
thinking thereupon, proceeds from man's 
obduracy in invading the spirit world with 
purely material ideas, and demanding physical 
phenomena where the physical, certainly as 
the world knows it, does not exist and has no 
application. 

But while the comprehending of this matter 
is extra-human and beset with difficulties often 
seemingly contradictory, because of our earthly 
view-point, we find satisfaction and comfort in 
observing how, even in this world, as great 
difficulties are overcome by the introduction of 
another principle of physical law which, for a 
time, dominates and seems to annul some 
fixed and invariable law of nature. 

We know that water is many times heavier 
than air, and we know that it is a law of phys- 
ics that the heavier substance will not rise in 
the lighter; and yet in an inch of rain over 
one hundred tons of water fall upon each acre 
of ground, which by some means had been 
held suspended in an atmosphere even lighter 
than that in which we habitually live. 



Persistent Identity 79 

The scientist will explain this; and in the 
next world there will be scientists as wise, if 
not wiser, who will never cease to explain 
seeming contradictions, which are not contra- 
dictions at all, but the appropriate operation 
of a particular principle of some universal law. 

If we had lived in a world without vegeta- 
tion, we should have observed that every free 
thing on the surface of the earth was subject 
to and always obeying the law of gravitation; 
and we should have thought it quite impossible 
for anything emanating from the earth to 
move, through centuries, in a direction exactly 
opposed to that of gravity; but were we tran- 
sported to the redwood forests of California, 
we should see there trees two and three hun- 
dred feet high that have lifted and maintained 
hundreds of tons of weight in exact defiance 
of this universal law. 

If, then, in this world of material things 
observation proves the reasonableness of the 
"impossible," how much easier it is to con- 
ceive of the reconciliation of seemingly impos- 
sible conditions in a spirit world under spiritual 
law. 

"Flesh and blood cannot inherit the king- 
dom of God," and we are without warrant in 



80 Persistent Identity 

thinking of our departed friends as they, at 
any time, appeared to us in the flesh. 

That which unendingly persists is of a 
purely spiritual nature; it is the ego — that elu- 
sive something by which each being is distin- 
guished from all others. It grows not old, it 
changes not, and it is that by which each shall 
be known in a world where there is no flesh, 
and where spirit responds to spirit. 

It is clear, then, that in the next world we 
shall recognize one another not by anything 
that we had seen with our natural eyes in this 
world. Our identity there will be purely spir- 
itual, that which cannot be apprehended by 
material eyes: the changeless primal attributes 
of each created being; the same yesterday, 
to-day, and forever— the ego. 

In its adaptation to mortal comprehension 
it may be likened to that which exists in the 
brain of the architect before a stone has been 
laid in the beautiful temple of his conception, 
and will there remain in all the freshness and 
beauty of its perfection after, peradventure, 
the temple shall have been destroyed and blot- 
ted out from the sight of men. It is the tem- 
ple's soul that survives in the mind of him who 
gave it being — that which changes not with 
the ravages of time and usage. 



Persistent Idefitity 81 

So in the mind of the Architect of archi- 
tects there may be stored the original type, 
the pattern of each created being, which, in 
the next world, will be that by which one shall 
know another, and which, like a drink of 
water, will appeal equally to the infant and the 
aged, to each according to his capacity. 

It may be that the "new name written upon 
a white stone" is the heavenly name of the 
child given at its birth, and applies only to the 
imperishable being — the unchangeable token of 
identity. 

Nor is this hard to conceive of. This con- 
stant quantity which alone can constitute un- 
ending identity rules even in this life. The 
infant and the adult may be equally drawn to 
a common mother, but they are not drawn by 
the same physical attractions; and the child 
will not love less its old and wrinkled mother 
than her whom she loved in the freshness of 
youth. And yet in the one there is not a 
line, nor an atom that was in the other. 
Plainly, then, it is not the visible, but the un- 
seen that constitutes the bond of union — that 
by which, in the next world, with spiritual 
vision, we shall be enabled to recognize those 
whom we knew in this world. 



82 Persistent Identity 

Doubtless it was this constant quantity, 
this ego by which Moses and Elijah were re- 
cognized on the Mount of Transfiguration; for 
even had they been in the flesh, which, how- 
ever, we know they did not take with them, 
they could not have been recognized after the 
lapse of one and two thousand years, or if, on 
the other hand, they appeared as they were at 
the time of their death those who knew them 
only as young men could not possibly have 
identified them amid the transformations of 
old age. 

Ridding our minds, then, of the physical 
aspect of the matter, which is without warrant 
in revelation or observed facts, and accepting 
as truth the theory of a spiritual and unalter- 
able ego — the felt, but unseen individuality of 
each dweller upon the earth, the conception of 
persistent identity and future recognition is 
divested of every difficulty, and becomes both 
easy and reasonable. 

There we shall see and know that which, 
in this world, we were conscious of only 
through the medium of our affections — the 
secret of our identity. 



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